Transmitter dish thingys

Got a problem

Okay, so on the second level, there are islands connected by these transmitter dishes. I go and generate a whole lot of Darwininans fine no problems.

But when I go through a transmitter dish on the way back, about 10-20 of them get stuck around the base of the destination each time. If I try to move my officer close to them, he goes back through the portal, but at the other end he bounces straight back again. I have to wait some 20 seconds to regain control of him. And they ignore the move order anyway, and just keep running round the dish.

Now I have 15 too few darwinians to finish the level, and about 30 of them are busy running around the dishes like idiots!

I am setting the destination as the source dish, assuming they will then wait at the other end. Am I doing something wrong?

Do you have "suck mode" for leaders yet?

Bnej, on Mar 31 2005, 06:24 AM, said:

But when I go through a transmitter dish on the way back, about 10-20 of them get stuck around the base of the destination each time. If I try to move my officer close to them, he goes back through the portal, but at the other end he bounces straight back again. I have to wait some 20 seconds to regain control of him. And they ignore the move order anyway, and just keep running round the dish.

That's very strange. Usually they all go through, or none go through. The only thing I can think of is that when setting your officer GoTo path, it must not have been right on the radar dish. When setting the path, make sure to click right on the base of the dish, and that the dish is highlighted with a large circle when you do so. If you're off a bit, the AI can get confused sometimes.

To save the Darwinians that are stuck at the dishes, just go back to the main map screen and re-enter the level. They will then just be wandering around where they were stuck before, and can be collected with an officer.

Or if you are feeling mean you could promote each stuck one to an officer, click on them, the do the terminate program key combo and use a engineer to collect their souls. 🙂

That would work, but it's a rather time consuming solution. Much easier to just leave and re-enter the level.

Bnej, on Mar 31 2005, 06:24 AM, said:

Okay, so on the second level, there are islands connected by these transmitter dishes. I go and generate a whole lot of Darwininans fine no problems.

But when I go through a transmitter dish on the way back, about 10-20 of them get stuck around the base of the destination each time. If I try to move my officer close to them, he goes back through the portal, but at the other end he bounces straight back again. I have to wait some 20 seconds to regain control of him. And they ignore the move order anyway, and just keep running round the dish.

Now I have 15 too few darwinians to finish the level, and about 30 of them are busy running around the dishes like idiots!

I am setting the destination as the source dish, assuming they will then wait at the other end. Am I doing something wrong?
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I've run across this as well. Sometimes the officer has actually disappeared, and i swear they keep trying to get to him as if he's ordered them to the other end so they dance around at the water's edge ignoring new officers.

Corpsecorps, on Apr 6 2005, 06:54 PM, said:

I've run across this as well. Sometimes the officer has actually disappeared, and i swear they keep trying to get to him as if he's ordered them to the other end so they dance around at the water's edge ignoring new officers.
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I can't even get ANY of them to go through the radar, I was able to get officers to go through fine. Do I need an officer upgrade?

I set the officer's goto orders to center on the transmitting dish ( a circle will be displayed when you mouse over it,) this will usually get all the darwinians close to him to enter and be transported. Then I tell the officer to go to the transmitting dish and send him through. Then, while he is in transport to the reciving dish, I tell him to move somewhere on the destination island, this will get him to move away from the reciving dish once he is through. I don't think you can change his goto orders while in transit (gives you a message about how the darwinians aren't smart enough to follow that path) so I wait till the first second he is on the destination island and then change his goto orders to somewhere on the destination island away from the reciving dish. Then, I move him around the reciving dish to herd the darwinians away from it, being very carefull that I click around the dish and not on it. If you don't change his goto orders, he's still telling his fellow LGMS to go to the transmitting dish and they will just mill about the reciving dish.

Hope that helps. Radar dishes are rather hard to use, and officers are tricky - I often mess up their goto orders when I tell them to move somewhere.. click vs. click and hold and whatnot. bloody 'ell

Hey guys, long time no see—

Anyway, I got the demo, and I have a problem with the radar dishes too, though quite different from what anyone else has mentioned here. The dishes worked fine on the first level, and now I'm on the second, with about 80 or so Darwinians travelling as soon as they're incubated through a network of officers. Whatever.

Anyway, whenever I select a radar dish, my screen goes crazy. Since I'm on a 500mhz G3 iMac with no graphics acceleration whatsoever, I have to play the game in it's lowest qualities and it still runes a little choppy, which only adds to the problem. It makes me have no control over the screen at all, so I can't aim one dish at another, unless I get extremely lucky. I can't make any more progress with the level until this bug (or whatever it is) is fixed. 😞 Any suggestions?

I've also experienced the problem with the Darwinians not wanting to obey the officer after using the dish. It's like the dish messes with their programming.

disco, on Apr 11 2005, 04:55 PM, said:

Anyway, whenever I select a radar dish, my screen goes crazy. Since I'm on a 500mhz G3 iMac with no graphics acceleration whatsoever, I have to play the game in it's lowest qualities and it still runes a little choppy, which only adds to the problem. It makes me have no control over the screen at all, so I can't aim one dish at another, unless I get extremely lucky. I can't make any more progress with the level until this bug (or whatever it is) is fixed. 😞 Any suggestions?
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Try hitting F2 to fix the camera angle before aiming the dish. (You'll have to hit it once or twice, I can't remember which.)

After you're done, press F2 two more times (or one, if you pressed it twice initially) to cycle back to the standard mode.

Andcarne, on Apr 12 2005, 03:14 AM, said:

Try hitting F2 to fix the camera angle before aiming the dish. (You'll have to hit it once or twice, I can't remember which.)

After you're done, press F2 two more times (or one, if you pressed it twice initially) to cycle back to the standard mode.
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I would also suggest that you ensure that both radar dishes are visible on screen when you lock the cameras. It can be a pain to move the camera around once it has been locked.

xander

The camera style isn't that painful to use if you figure out the controls for debug mode. (they're quite different) It's what you'll be using for the map editor, so it won't hurt to know them. The A and D keys move your right and left, while W and S moves the camera in the direction it's pointing. (ie, if you're looking down you go down by pressing W and vice versa) To rotate the camera press and hold the Right Mouse button, then move the mouse. Holding the RMB also causes all movement with the WSAD keys to be sped up. (holding shift will negate this)

Hope that helps,
Andrew

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The dishes worked fine on the first level, and now I'm on the second, with about 80 or so Darwinians travelling as soon as they're incubated through a network of officers. Whatever.

Due to the sometimes-works nature of officers, I find that creating a "network" of officers as you describe is a lot more effective than trying to move Darwinians with a single officer. Just position officers so that as soon as the Darwinians reach the end of one Goto path, there's another officer waiting to direct them further.

I finally encountered my first instance of "crazy camera" syndrome when selecting a dish, in the Yard.

Assuming Darwinia uses OpenGL----it looks like it does----then I have to say, the particular way the screen went crazy suggested to me that some transformation matrix was being applied repeatedly instead of only once.

Is it possible you've got a glLoadIdentity() missing somewhere?

This issue should be fixed in the next patch.

Yeah, your camera spins around so fast it makes you wanna shout, "JANE! STOP THIS CRAZY THING!" 😄